CHOCOLATE TEMPERING - Daring Baker's Challenge - August / 2011

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Beautiful and shiny chocolate candies, huh? Playing with chocolate, for me, wasn't always like that. I had tried it so many times but only a few were successful and I couldn't find out exactly where I was going wrong.

The August 2011 Daring Bakers’ Challenge was hosted by Lisa of Parsley, Sage, Desserts and Line Drive and Mandy of What the Fruitcake?!. These two sugar mavens challenged us to make sinfully delicious candies! This was a special challenge for the Daring Bakers because the good folks at http://www.chocoley.com offered an amazing prize for the winner of the most creative and delicious candy!

 Now I've learned  the secrets of tempering chocolate correctly, and you just can't go wrong! A correctly tempered chocolate will be shiny, it will set beautifully and remain like that, unless you are located in a very warm place. I experienced temperatures around 26 C inside my home and they didn't change a bit. I was so excited with the results that I went a little further and made liquor filled chocolate, and by that I mean plain liquor, no syrup added, no sugar crystals added, no fondant added, just a little bite sized boozy candy for pure indulgence. Something that I have always wanted to accomplish.

I started working with the chocolate for this challenge in a very shy way. I got some white chocolate that I had in the pantry and tested the technique of tempering chocolate following the detailed step by step that Mandy and Lisa provided. I bought a candy mold and made plain white chocolate candies. No flavors added, no fillings, just plain white chocolate that I had on hand. Guess I wasn't very optimistic after all. However, as you can see, they turned out nice and shiny, and remained that way! I could hardly believe it! I got back to it half an hour later and they were intact!

I got excited with the result, so started to put my projects into action.

Other delicious temptations:

Dark chocolate hiding whole nuts such as cashew nuts and pecans.

100% banana filling (no sugar added) for this dipped chocolate candy, garnished with cinnamon sprinkles.

Cinnamon Chips and sprinkles made with tempered white chocolate. 

Just the other day I read about the idea of homemade cinnamon/white chocolate chips at Barbara Bakes (thanks Barbara!) and made these little beauties, extending the idea to cinnamon sprinkles. More on these in the next few weeks!

Many thanks to Mandy and Lisa for this FANTASTIC  challenge! You both hosted this challenge in an unbelievable way, not only with extremely detailed instructions but also with all the support in the forums during the month. I had a blast!

If you want to see the amazing chocolate creations of my fellow Daring Bakers, please visit THE DARING KITCHEN where you will also find the original guidelines for this challenge.

For more details on tempering chocolate, please click the RECIPE button below. My experiments will get dedicated  posts in the next few weeks :o)

TEMPERING CHOCOLATE

Following the detailed instructions from the challenge, this is how I did it:

I chopped some dark chocolate, using a large knife.

I separated about 1/3 of the chocolate.

In a sauce pan I boiled about 1 inch of water. I turned off the heat and placed a bowl with the chopped chocolate.  Choose a bowl that fits snugly to avoid water vapor from accidentally entering your chocolate. Even a little bit of water can spoil your final result. Also, the bowl should not touch the water.

With a rubber spatula, stir the chocolate until it melts.

Remove from heat as soon as it reaches 45°C - 50°C

Add the remaining 1/3 of the chopped chocolate.

Keep stirring until the chocolate melts and the temperature goes down to 27°C.

Put the bowl back on the sauce pan with hot water for little bits of time (like 30 seconds each time) until the chocolate reaches 32°C.

At this stage the chocolate is tempered and ready to use.

These temperatures will vary slightly when using milk or white chocolate as follows:

TEMPERING RANGES